Our First Holiday Season in Sicily.

We had our first Christmas and New Year's here in Sicily.  We had a very nice Christmas Eve.  We spent the day hanging out and I did a good bit of cooking.  We had a bunch of different appetizers to eat.  We had corn-dog nuggets, chicken wings, mozzarella sticks, pizza rolls and chips with two kinds of dips.  Nothing healthy and all delicious.

The snacks that Santa ate a bit of.

We went out for a drive to see Christmas lights.  We normally do that when we are in the states.  We knew that people in base housing put up lights, but didn't know if they did it off base or not.  We rarely go out into "town" at night.  We drive between housing and NAS 1 and that's in the country.  We decided to drive up into Motta to see if there were any lights and there were!  They decorate with lights and Christmas trees like we do.  The cutest thing we saw were these little Santa Claus hanging from balconies on a ladder, like he was climbing up to bring up gifts.  It was great.  We were happy to see that Italians aren't much different than Americans with the lights for Christmas.

The kids and Cody played "Just Dance 2" after we got home.

We had a laid back Christmas with the kids opening up their gifts around 8am.  The boys actually got up at 2AM and I heard them at  3AM and yelled them to go back to bed!  They were playing Wii...waiting for time to get ups.  Crazy children!!

We had our traditional seafood fare for Christmas dinner.  We enjoyed some homemade coleslaw as well.  The highlight of the gift-giving was when Gavin gave Ethan a set of salt and pepper shakers!  That was what he picked out to give him from the thrift store shopping.  Obviously the high school student that was helping Gavin out...wasn't really doing anything.  WHY would he let him pick out that to give his 11 year old brother??  Funny stuff.

I got a sewing machine that I had been wanting and I'm hoping to start doing small learning sewing projects.

It was a peaceful and fun Christmas.

New Years's Eve we spent the day in Catania on an ITT trip.  I'll write a whole page about that with pictures another day.  It was a busy day, but it was fun.  We learned some about the history of Catania and finally saw Elephant square.

Cody and I went to the movies and saw "New Year's Eve", which was an okay movie, but was a great time out.  We came home and hung out doing random things.  The kids watched a movie, I looked at travel info online and Cody studied for the exam he's planning on taking for The Professional Safety Certification sometime next year.  Norah passed out before midnight, but the boys made it.  We went outside and saw the amazing display of fireworks all over the countryside.  We have a view of Mt. Etna and all the little towns and we could see thousands of fireworks going off.  It was like nothing I had ever seen or heard before.  It was quite something and I will actually look forward to seeing it again next year.

I called my Nana and Papaw as is our tradition and then I went to bed.  Our Holidays were laid back and relaxing; just the way I like them!

Now we are here, ready to start 2012 with hope for a good year!
Happy New Year!